Society’s Breakdown is Here, Let’s ‘Learn to Fly’

Humanity is at a crossroads, we know this problem, we've been here time and time again, politicians immediately take to their talking points, their supporters clamor to regurgitate it all over on social media, and what happens, the division continues, the sides take to their corners, and lay waste in hateful rhetoric anyone who thinks differently. Meanwhile Tom Petty's guitar gently weeps.

All I know right now, it hurts to be human, with 59 dead at a country concert in Las Vegas and nearly 500 injured, also on the same day, the news of Tom Petty suffering a cardiac arrest and his final passing. Both hit me in different ways. I grew up listening to TP, literally could recite every lyric of Damn The Torpedoes, but really it was the images of one girl on a field across from the Mandalay Bay hotel with blood dripping down her leg that ripped through my soul, huddled with two of her friends, clearly they passed on and I could only imagine how her parents feel. I had to stop and say to myself let me stay here and feel their pain, because I am human. That is what makes us human we are empathetic; we feel each other's pain, no matter the race, or political affiliation or where we live, we feel. But somehow that's gotten lost in the shuffle of the collective need to respond on social media. Our thinking has become obscured by our beliefs. Our mind races ahead disconnected because there is always someone to blame, someone to shame, to make us not feel the pain. And before you know it a nasty tweet, more divisive rhetoric spewed into an already numbed society. In the words of Tom Petty, we're running down a dream, a dream for some to grab that headline or get those followers, but that dream is really a nightmare, because it only adds to the searing of each other's hate, deeper into the collective unconscious.

We must evolve, in order for change to occur, and that means we have to change the way we see things. Our perception, our belief system has forced us into ideological boxes, snapshots for advertisers to covet, politicians to solicit and advance with, Russians to prey on. We are in a feeding frenzy on social media like a pack of wolves hungry for the next person that disagrees with us to step in front of us, then we pull out our own assault rifle, and attack in 140 characters or less. And this continues, the frequency is now heightened and The waiting is the hardest part. Because you know the inevitable, it'll happen again.

The human race is in peril, we don't have time any longer, we are destroying ourselves it's time that we changed the way we look at one another, changed our beliefs and stopped perceiving people with different politics as our enemies. We can't look to our leaders anymore, we can't point the finger, It's time for us to be the change. With the advent of social media and the power that brings us let's, have Tom Petty lead, as he writes, You can stand me up at the gates of hell but I won't back down.

Well the good old days may not return. And the rocks might melt and the sea may burn. But I'm learning to fly, but I ain't got wings.